It must be simple

Many of you know that I’m a big fan of the five orders of ignorance (link is to my interpretation – the author’s original paper is here). I especially like the concept of “unknown unknowns” those bits of knowledge that are critical – despite the fact that we didn’t recognize those bits until they fell onto our laps.

I’ve been pondering over an interesting fuzzy line between Armour’s second level of ignorance (you know you don’t know something), and his third level of ignorance (you don’t know you don’t know). I’ve noticed that often, when you know nothing about a subject, you perceive it as simple. Then, as you learn more, it seems impossibly difficult; and then, as you master it, it become’s easier to manage (but probably never as simple as you imagined in the first place). The second and third levels of ignorance seem to play with each other as you try to move knowledge into the first level of ignorance (you know what you know)

An example would probably help here. Many years ago, I knew nothing about recording music, but I wanted to be able to record my own stuff, overdub, mix, edit, etc. Since I had never done it before, I was convinced it was easy, and that anyone with a brain and a halfway working set of ears should be able to do it.Within a few weeks of attempting to pick up this “easy task”, I realized it was extremely complicated and required a lot of meticulous work (this was pre-digital, so within a few weeks I was fixing timing issues with a razor blade). I didn’t think I’d ever get a handle on it, but eventually I figured enough stuff out for my own purposes, and to this day I still uncover areas of complexity I never imagined.

There’s another great example of this from my list of favorite movies that came out when I was 19 – Better off Dead. There’s a scene where John Cusack’s character is on top of a mountain ready to ski down and his friend gives him this advice:

Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn

That’s exactly the “expert” advice someone who doesn’t know the subject would give. Steve Martin used to tell a similar joke about skiing – I don’t remember it exactly, but it went something like this:

Skiing – you go to the top of a mountain with slippery things on each foot and go down. Try not to – that would be a sport!

Perhaps a better example for testers is Jerry Weinberg’s Perfect Software book. To me, it’s not so much a testing book, but it’s a wonderful book to give to people who don’t know anything about testing – mainly because most people who don’t know about testing often think it’s a simple activity that has something to do with banging on keys or pushing buttons. Once you learn a bit about software testing, you of course realize that it’s far more complex than you ever could imagine. Eventually (if you’re lucky), you fall in love with the challenge and never look back.

I see at least a few examples of this phenomenon every day. I have lost track of the times I’ve heard people critiquing the efforts to plug the oil leak in the Gulf and offering their own advice. However, the fact that they haven’t been able to solve it, and have tried to fix it several ways must mean it’s probably a more complex problem than most of us understand (or that the efforts are run by aliens from the planet Stupid).

I suppose the moral of all this is that nothing is as simple as it appears – especially with knowledge acquisition. Keep it in mind the next time you think you know something …